Idiocracy Watch
Friendly Purple Advice for the Reds
“Fight!” is not your best slogan for November. TASS is not your best mouthpiece.
For us neutrals, we’re waiting to see if Trump can finally, at long last, think of anything and anyone other than himself. If he will use this moment to try genuinely to unite the country, and urge everyone, including his most rabid hypnotized MAGA personality-cultists, to tamp down their rhetoric. To remind them the line we draw in this liberty-centric democratic republic is at violence.
Your freedom stops at the tip of a dark blue wokester/Antifa Bolshevik’s nose … or ear lobe, as the case may be.
There are several things we can be grateful for as a nation of good will, if indeed we still are one, in this moment of otherwise solemn tragedy, especially for the families of the spectators killed and injured:
- First and foremost that Trump was only grazed
- That the Secret Service snipers were able to neutralize the shooter as quickly as they did, preventing a mass killing
- That (at least so far) this seems like the work of a lone mentally unstable youth of ambiguous political leanings, and not some larger conspiracy … more a John Hinckley Jr. than a Lee Harvey Oswald
From a purple perspective, the words of moderation from Chris Lacivita and Suzie Wiles (Trump’s campaign managers) are what we want to hear more of from the man himself:
The Little Don, JD Vance and MTG type toadies trying to lay the blame for political violence in the USA in 2024 on Biden is not going to sell here in the neutral zone. Just because TASS is pushing that line (see embed above), doesn’t make it so.
If anything, here in the middle of the horseshoe, there’s a sense of karma.
Only one party had a January 6 violent insurrection. Only one party stands for the right for civilians to own assault rifles. Only one party dog whistles to domestic terror groups like the Proud Boys to “stand back, and stand ready”. Only one candidate in the election has a history of encouraging violence by his supporters. Only one has mused aloud about being a dictator, exercising the Unitary Executive powers his savviest legal and political minds have patiently nurtured over almost half a century now. Only one party is running a convicted felon, whom they argue should be above the law.
It wasn’t the Social Democrats in Germany in the 1930s who let the brown shirts loose on their political enemies.
No, we purples are not like the nutty left kids on TikTok celebrating and wishing “just one inch more”. Even if Trump’s own lawyers argued to the SCOTUS months ago that he should have immunity for ordering the assassination of his own political rivals, we don’t want the country going that low.
Nor do we imagine that the current administration or blue grandees (Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, Obama, Clinton, Clyburn, etc…) would ever contemplate such an option, even if the SCOTUS has now granted immunity for exercising it, say, as an official act to preserve democracy. What was satire a couple of weeks ago might have felt good or even justified. Today, it’s not funny.
Bannon & co., sure, they absolutely have clamored for revolution and autocracy all along. Putin, Peskov & co., sure … as they have been systematically killing their opponents and rivals for many years now in the Russian Empire. (No surprises in that TASS embed at the top of this post.)
The passions in the immediate aftermath of the attempt will certainly strengthen the convictions of both bases. The gullible MAGA sheep will see this as some sort of confirmation of the divine election of their messiah. The equally gullible blue-black Resistance will take the reds’ new “Fight!” slogan as an even more direct threat.
And perhaps well they should: who exactly was Trump suggesting his followers fight? Who was the You in the “Fuck You!” shouted by the guy on the right, flashing the bird:
I talked to a red-leaning acquaintance later in the afternoon California time on Saturday. (For all I know, he might be outright MAGA … a union man from Louisiana … but keeping his true feelings to himself here in the blue Bay Area.) His initial take was pretty dark, that if the crazy kid had succeeded, it would have sparked the Civil War 2.0 that the reds are prepping (for).
After I pointed out the shooter was a registered Republican, we both ended the chat agreeing that it’s time to turn the temperature down in the country.
Biden and the blue leadership gave it their best.
Over to you POTUS 45.
